A4uexpo Day One Success & Key Takeaways

After a day rammed full of insights, networking, meetings and goody bag swag, hundreds of knowledge-thirsty attendees seemed to enjoy day one of the a4uexpo – Amsterdam-style.

More than 800 well-dressed professionals jetted into the Dutch capital for the two-day event and day one kicked off with sessions on 'New Media Traffic Acquisition Strategies', 'Everyone is Special' - Personalisation in Conversion Tactics', and 'Affiliate Mobile 101: Kick-start your Mobile Success'.

From Next Generation 'Remarketing and Retargeting' and 'SEO for Site Owners - Remaining Agile in 2013', to 'International Expansion: Tried, Tested and Delivered' and Speed Networking, – so far there has been a huge variety of insightful content and many a networking opportunity.

'Value' of the A4uexpo & Key Takeaways

Rob Wilson, chief executive officer of Tradedoubler; and a4uexpo platinum sponsor, said: “The value of events like a4uexpo Europe, (soon to be renamed Performance Marketing Insights (PMI) Europe) is the professionalisation of the industry and the importance of bringing new brands into the market to expand globally. The level of conversations have so far been impressive.”

WordPress is worth revisiting according to one of the content management's biggest advocates, Joost de Valk. Yesterday he recommended using the genesis framework and avoiding all themes that were not from the WordPress official site.

On the subject of plugins, de Valk, with a somewhat biased hat on, was full of praise for his own line of plugins such as WordPress SEO and Google Analytics for WordPress. For those looking at an alternative to Google's offering, de Valk recommended Clicky, which he uses too, but did warn against using WordPress' own stats.

Facebook is the social network for conducting commercial business in the eyes of Zazzle's founder and managing director, Simon Penson. In yesterday's session he said he believes the volume of data that is available on the social network and the targeting that can be accomplished because of this, make it an indispensable tool for any company with a serious content strategy. We will be covering more tips from this session soon.

Penson may have been waxing considerable lyrical into Facebook, but he did not write off the social network's other competitors either. He said they all offered something. For example, Google+ is useful for search, Twitter for comms, LinkedIn for business relationships and Pinterest if you are in the fashion vertical.

House of Kaizen founding partner, Ivan Imhoff, described us all as having a limited reservoir of attention during his session on CRO: It's All Psychological. Website creators must decide where consumers expend this reservoir. Choose wrong and you will have lost a potential customer.

A Global Audience

Day two of the a4uexpo, which is sponsored by Tradedoubler, zanox, affilinet, Fruzzel, VIP Online Media, Commission Junction, Kwanko, Webgains, Linkdex, daisycon, Glossybox, Public !deas, ReatilMeNot – and more, consists of sessions such as 'Engaging with Consumers in a Multi-platform World', 'Fashioning Success - Becoming Successful with Fashion in Performance Marketing' and 'Keynote: Dual-Screening and the Convergence of Engagement'.

While Amsterdam-based attendee Daniel Einars, from TravelBird, said he was keen to hear all about 'CRO: It's All Psychological', managing director of the Clash Group UK; Dominic Yacoubian, said he enjoyed networking with US and Israel-based companies. Sydney-based general manager of dgm, John Matthews, also commented that Australia would hugely benefit from an event such as this 'downunder'.

Sarah Parsonage; managing director of a4uexpo added: “This year we have seen a truly global audience, the sessions have been just as insightful into the European market as ever and we have had some great feedback so far – and it's not over yet.

“From Canada and Australia to Israel, Russia, Singapore and Sweden, there is a huge variety of attendees here and we have also seen an increase in advertisers and local publishers.”